Kk11 c

♦

But in the weeks that followed I could see that Kensuke was brooding on the terrible events of that day. He set about making a cage of stout bamboo at the back of the cave to house the orang-utans more securely in case the killer men ever returned. He kept going over and over it, how he should have done this before, how he would never have forgiven himself if Kikanbo had been taken, how he wished the gibbons would come when he sang, so he could save them too. We cut down branches and brush from the forest and stacked them outside the cave mouth so that they could be pulled across to disguise the entrance to the cave house.

He became very nervous, very anxious, sending me often to the hilltop with the binoculars to see if the junk had returned. But as time went by, as the immediate threat receded, he became more his own self again. Even so, I felt he was always wary, always slightly on edge.

♦

Because he was keeping so many of my paintings now, we found we were running out of good painting shells. So early one morning we set off on an expedition to find some more. We scoured the beach, heads down, side by side, just a few feet apart. There was always an element of competition with our shell collecting – who would find the first, the biggest, the most perfect. We had not been at it long and neither of us had yet found a single shell, when I became aware that he had stopped walking.

“Micasan,” he breathed, and he was pointing out to sea with his stick. There was something out there, something white, but too defined, too shaped, to be a cloud.

We had left the binoculars behind. With Stella yapping at me all the way, I raced back along the beach and up the track to the cave house, grabbed the binoculars and made for the top of the hill. A sail! Two sails. Two white sails. I bounded down the hillside, back into the cave and pulled out a lighted stick from the fire. By the time I reached the beacon Kensuke was already there. He took the binoculars from me and looked for himself.

“Can I light it?” I asked. “Can I?”

“All right, Micasan,” he said. “All right.”

I thrust the lighted stick deep into the beacon, in amongst the dry leaves and twigs at its core. It lit almost instantly and very soon flames were roaring up into the wood, licking out at us as the wind took them. We backed away at the sudden heat of it. I was disappointed there were so many flames. I wanted smoke, not flames. I wanted towering clouds of smoke.

“Do not worry, Micasan,” Kensuke said. “They see this for sure. You see.”

We took turns with the binoculars. Still the yacht had not turned. They had not seen it. The smoke was beginning to billow up into the sky. Desperately I threw more and more wood onto the fire, until it was a roaring inferno of flame and dense smoke.

I had thrown on almost the very last of the wood we had collected, when Kensuke said suddenly, “Micasan, it is coming. I think the boat is coming.”

He handed me the binoculars. The yacht was turning. It was very definitely turning, but I couldn’t make out whether it was towards us or away from us. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not sure.”

He took the binoculars off me. “I tell you, Micasan, it come this way. They see us. I am very sure. It come to our island.”

Moments later, as the wind filled the sails, I knew he was right. We hugged each other there on the hilltop beside the blazing beacon. I leaped up and down like a wild thing, and Stella went mad with me. Every time I looked through the binoculars now, the yacht was coming in closer.

“She’s a big yacht,” I said. “I can’t see her flag. Dark blue hull, like the Peggy Sue.” Only then, as I said it out loud, did I begin to hope that it could possibly be her. Gradually hope turned to belief, and belief to certainty. I saw a blue cap, my mother’s cap. It was them! It was them! “Kensuke,” I cried, still looking through the binoculars, “Kensuke, it’s the Peggy Sue. It is. They’ve come back for me. They’ve come back.” But Kensuke did not reply. When I looked round, I discovered he was not there.

I found him sitting at the mouth of the cave house, with my football in his lap. He looked up at me, and I knew already from the look in his eyes what he was going to tell me.

He stood up, put his hands on my shoulders, and looked me deep in the eyes. “You listen to me very good now, Micasan,” he said. “I am too old for that new world you tell me about. It is very exciting world, but it is not my world. My world was Japan, long time ago. And now my world is here. I think about it for long time. If Kimi is alive, if Michiya is alive, then they think I am dead long time ago. I would be like ghost coming home. I am not same person. They not same either. And, besides, I have family here, orang-utan family. Maybe killer men come again. Who look after them then? No, I stay on my island. This is my place. This Kensuke’s Kingdom. Emperor must stay in his Kingdom, look after his people. Emperor does not run away. Not honourable thing to do.”

I could see there was no point in pleading or arguing or protesting. He put his forehead against mine and let me cry. “You go now,” he went on, “but before you go, you promise three things. First, you paint every day of your life, so one day you be great artist like Hokusai. Second, you think of me sometime, often maybe, when you are home in England. When you look up at full moon, you think of me, and I do same for you. That way we never forget each other. Last thing you promise and very important for me. Very important you say nothing of this, nothing of me. You come here alone. You alone here in this place, you understand? I not here. After ten years, you say what you like. All that left of me then is bones. It not matter any more then. I want no one come looking for me. I stay here. I live life in peace. No people. People come, no peace. You understand? You keep secret for me, Mica? You promise?”

“I promise,” I said.

He smiled and gave me my football. “You take football. You very good at football, but you very much better painter. You go now.” And with his arm round my shoulder he took me outside. “You go,” he said. I walked away only a little way and turned round. He was still standing at the mouth of the cave. “You go now please.” And he bowed to me. I bowed back. “Sayonara, Micasan’, he said. “It has been honour to know you, great honour of my life.” I hadn’t the voice to reply.

Blinded with tears I ran off down the track. Stella didn’t come at once, but by the time I reached the edge of the forest she had caught up with me. She raced out on to the beach barking at the Peggy Sue, but I stayed where I was hidden in the shadow of the trees and cried out all my tears. I watched the Peggy Sue come sailing in. It was indeed my mother and my father onboard. They had seen Stella by now and were calling to her. She was barking her silly head off. I saw the anchor go down.

“Goodbye, Kensuke,” I whispered. I took a deep breath and ran out on to the sand waving and yelling.

I splashed out into the shallows to meet them. My mother just cried and hugged me till I thought I’d break. She kept saying over and over again, “Didn’t I tell you we’d find him? Didn’t I tell you?”

The first words my father said were, “Hello, monkey face.”

For almost a year my mother and father had searched for me. No one would help them, for no one would believe I could still be alive – not a chance in a million, they said. My father too – he later admitted – had given me up for dead. But never my mother. So far as she was concerned I was alive, I had to be alive. She simply knew it in her heart. So they had sailed from island to island, searching on until they had found me. Not a miracle, just faith.

∨ Kensuke’s Kingdom ∧

Postscript

Four years after this book was first published, I received this letter.

Dear Michael,

I write to tell you, in my bad English, that my name is Michiya Ogawa. I am the son of Dr Kensuke Ogawa. Until I read your book I thought my father had died in the war. My mother died only three years ago still believing this. As you say in your book, we lived in Nagasaki, but we were very lucky. Before the bomb fell we went into the countryside to see my grandmother for a few days. So we lived.

I have no memories of my father, only some photographs and your book. It would be a pleasure to talk to someone who knew my father as you did. Maybe one day we could meet. I hope so.

With my best wishes,

Michiya Ogawa.

A month after receiving this letter I went to Japan, and I met Michiya. He laughs just like his father did.